People of Color

Historical Use

In the past, the phrase free people of color was used to encode the experience of non-Whites after the abolition of slavery throughout Latin America and the United States. In some cases, however, the phrase did not imply all non-White people, for example, when Native Americans and other free people of color were portrayed as having owned their own slaves. In such instances, the term was a more stratified term that regulated the colonization of the seemingly less enslaved people, creating a buffer of sorts between (Black) slaves and (White) colonizers.

In the United States in particular, there is a trajectory to the term—from more derogatory terms such as negroes, to colored, to people of color. (The term colored, however, has a different meaning in other countries such as South Africa, but that discussion is beyond the scope of this entry.) Although in this genealogy the term refers predominantly to Blacks, at certain historical moments and in various regions Mexicans, among some of the oldest “immigrants,” were excluded from “White”-only spaces under the nomenclature of “colored” along with Blacks. One of the developments of the term people of color is precisely its flexibility in accommodating various groups similarly disadvantaged, even if their disadvantages are based on different variables (e.g., access to education, housing, employment, immigration status, English proficiency). Furthermore, a comparative view of the United States with another country, such as Canada, can show that however the term people of color is conceptualized there (e.g., through the language of aboriginal peoples), there are similarities in crucial aspects of inequality such as the high percentage of people of color in prisons.

Because of its development, the term has a strong association to phenotype, skin color, and eye/hair/other physiological aspects that often defined Blacks in the United States. As a result, at times African Americans use people of color to refer only to those individuals who “look Black.” Yet Black scholars in the humanities and social sciences have also underscored how the notion of “feeling Black” is as much an imposition of outside group definitions of Black communities. Similarly, the use of the terms Brown, Yellow, and Red, while having various connotations depending on who is talking (sometimes their use is perceived as offensive), have been used politically to mobilize communities of color throughout the United States during the latter part of the 20th century and the early 21st century.

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